As a reader of this blog – you might know that I follow and agree with Dave Winer (who I do not know) .. a lot. In fact, a quick search on Beyond Bridges posts reveals 12 separate posts mentioning his name alone.

I had already been looking at this when Robert first announced it, commenting to him through Twitter that since I don’t use Facebook, I couldn’t comment on his blog. A short flurry of exchanges ensued, including being followed by the man himself. Honored, though I suspect that I might need to work hard to have him be a regular listener !

But back to that post by Dave. I popped over to Twitter to share this with Dave – and lo – I discovered he had blocked me. Blocked mind you. Not muted, but blocked.

I’d of course add my favorite (that doesn’t actually exist) — mute-with-timeout, which would allow me to turn off messages from people who might have a reason right now to be angry, but who I’d like to automatically give another chance to communicate with me, after having a chance to cool down.

This suggests that I had obviously done something really really bad.

Sorry Dave. Maybe I ‘@ called you’ a little too much on Twitter, maybe I said something that upset you. My mistake. Apologies. And don’t worry, no need to unblock me, I have other accounts if I really want to see what you are saying on Twitter, but I don’t. Most of my interest in your work lies on Scripting.com anyway, which I still receive through my RSS feed in Feedly – I just won’t @ Call you anymore, because that is the only reason I can come up with as to why I am blocked.

Apple’s Cook is second most favorable tech CEO in poll of registered voters

… but rather for some of the comments in the body …

“About four out of 10 respondents (39 percent) said they view the Apple leader favorably. Most of the rest (44 percent) said they hadn’t heard of him or have no opinion.” (love to know the detail of that split.)

“12 percent said they hadn’t heard much about the Apple controversy, and another 12 percent said they’d heard nothing about it.“

“when respondents saw some of Apple’s arguments laid out before them, they grew more likely to support the tech giant’s position in the debate.”

Bottom line – ask people who know nothing about a case what they think and you get the answer you would expect. George Orwell’s Groupthink comes to mind.